


Debriefing Dana/Slayer Memories

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-14
Updated: 2008-06-25
Packaged: 2019-06-14 09:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15385905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Once the Watchers Council has retrieved Dana from Wolfram & Hart, she reveals some sensitive information to the Head Slayer. Such as that Spike isn't quite as dead as Buffy thought.





	1. Debriefing Dana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little thing I just jotted down, imagining what the watcher's council would do with Dana once they had her. And, because I'm madly in love with Spike, they mostly talk about Spike. :D
> 
> Dana doesn't say much in "Damage" and what she says isn't lucid... so I felt odd every time I had her speak. Well, let me know what you think...

Buffy pushed past the guards and into a small basement room to find Giles, her Giles, sitting at a small table with a teenaged girl. They both had their hands on the table in front of them, their postures almost identical, save that the girl was wearing shackles. Papers and books radiated out from them in the warm light of the room like shrapnel from an explosion.

“So here’s where you’ve been! Giles...”

Giles held up a finger to stop her. The girl was talking in a language Buffy had never heard before, and Giles was answering back. Buffy suddenly felt very, very much out of place. There were a few chairs along the wall; she selected one and sat down.

The girl suddenly snapped her head around to stare at Buffy. “That’s me! We’re very pretty.”

Buffy’s eyes widened. “Woah… what?”

“Buffy, meet Dana. She is a very, very special girl.” Giles kept his gaze on the girls’ turned head.

“Dana, hi. I’m Buffy.” Buffy stood and held a hand out, looked at the shackles, and dropped her hand in embarrassment. “Are you a slayer?”

“Head and heart. Cut until you see dust.” Dana looked down, her fingers twitching on the table. “Not good to talk about it. Fuzzy in the head. Brown makes you sleepy.”

“Yes, she is. We didn’t know of her until recently. She was in a mental institution in Los Angeles.”

“The girl Andrew went to get?”

Giles grimaced. “Yes. One and the same.”

Dana looked away from Buffy as suddenly as she had looked at her and rattled off something rapid and unintelligible to Giles.

“What is she speaking?”

“Hindi. Uh… trace of Bengali accent, I believe. She’s telling me she’s not fond of the watcher’s council. I wish that weren’t becoming a pattern.”

“Oo… trace accent huh? Like I can call you on that.” Buffy smirked.

“Dana’s base personality is very fragile. She was the victim of years of systematic abuse. When she started having slayer dreams, she somehow latched on to the personalities of former slayers. It’s rather like multiple personality disorder, or possession, or, well, I’m not sure. But it’s fascinating.”

Dana said something clipped that seemed her assessment of how ‘fascinating’ it was.

“She retreats into these memories, or they are simply too strong for her to resist. I don’t know. Perhaps it is just that, in the memories of other slayers, she is occasionally victorious, always strong, and above all else, not a mere victim.” Giles was getting excited. He pulled up some papers from the floor. “I’ve been trying to draw out her memories using sections of the watcher’s diaries. It’s exciting. I’ve already confirmed four separate slayer identities and specific events from their lives. This might be a way to, well, to contact the past. We could find out about events that were lost forever to history!”

Dana rolled her eyes and looked pleadingly at Buffy. “Is he always this _thick_?” she asked in a very English accent.

Buffy shrugged. “Watchers.” She knelt to look at the stacks. “Are these separated by year?”

“By continent.” Giles took his glasses off. “And to whom am I speaking now?”

“I want to see a warrant for my arrest,” Dana said, continuing to speak with an English accent. “There may be a war on, but I still have my rights.” She raised the shackles.

“This is incredible. She is actually acting out the part of a past slayer in the present. Interacting. Buffy, hand me that folder, there on your right.” Giles waved frantically while not taking his eyes off Dana.

Buffy handed him the folder too quickly and his hand was still waggling. Papers and photos spilled all over the place.

Dana shrank back in her chair, frightened by the sudden motion. Buffy scrambled to pick up the papers and found…

“Spike.”

Buffy stared up at Dana, shocked to have spoken at the same time as the mad slayer. Buffy slowly set the photograph on the table between Dana and Giles. It was black and white, crimped on the edges, a black-haired Spike smiling smugly for the camera, his arms around Drusilla, who leaned into his embrace, looking particularly drugged.

Dana’s bound hands moved toward the picture. She used only the tip of her finger to nudge the picture straight. “He wasn’t here,” she said.

“She knows Spike.” Buffy’s voice had a small note of panic.

“I should be surprised if she didn’t. Dana is drawing on all the memories of the slayer line. Few figures would repeat as… significantly as William the Bloody.”

Giles turned to Dana with an intent look on his face. He spoke very evenly, like he was narrating a tape on English pronunciation. “This is a vampire. William the Bloody. Tell me, if you can, when you first saw him.”

And Dana responded, her voice altered radically into the lilt of Chinese.

Giles frowned, squinted, responded, responded with a slightly different cadence, and finally nodded. He wrote furiously.

Buffy felt very, very extraneous.

Still, Giles seemed to like having an audience. “Curse Ethan and his ‘you only need one dialect of Chinese’ rubbish. Yes… yes. She says she did not know there were vampires who weren’t Chinese; that if they had known the foreigners would bring foreign demons with them the riots would have come a lot sooner. And she wishes she could be with her mother… she fears her safety with the general disorder in the streets… the… uh… dog-faced monster… oh, oh dear, I think she means me.”

He shot Buffy an irritated look as she giggled. “I’m going to ask her to describe her first interactions with Spike. This… this could be invaluable information.” Giles tapped the top of Spike’s picture, still sitting in front of Dana’s bound hands like a devotional object. After he spoke in Chinese, and Dana squinted at him in confusion, and he repeated himself more slowly, he said, “Buffy, perhaps you should not be here for this.”

“I want to know,” she said.

Dana finally seemed to understand Giles, and spoke slowly, like a school teacher. Giles nodded, narrating his translation for the tape-recorder. “He spoke to me… in his own language. He looked… uh… leered? He acted as a prostitute.”

Buffy covered her mouth as a laugh struggled to escape. Giles didn’t notice. “No… as though he thought _I_ was a prostitute. Very unseemly. Thankful that he did not speak a civilized language. But never had a vampire… white man or normal… just spoken to me and left. I described him to the watcher… and was told this was no one of consequence. There was so much to be done, that week. Helping the poor escape the city. So many demons ready to take advantage of the chaos. I forgot about him. He came upon me again in the temple… I had come to bid grandfather farewell. The… demon… yes this is a very good picture of him, but the hair is wrong. The demon again approached me, speaking for his own enjoyment. I took the sacred sword from the wall and charged, meaning to kill him quickly. It was not to be. We fought long. He was… joyful of battle. It was an advantage. When he bested me, he held me with surprising tenderness. I thought… he meant to take my virginity and ruin me completely. He did not, only looked at me with affection and then, as expected, the bite. It did not hurt as much as I feared. I was ready to die. I asked him if he would tell my mother I was sorry, that I failed her. He responded in his language. I hope he said he would, though I don’t know why I would trust him not to kill her as well.”

Dana fell silent. Giles wiped his brow, sinking back in his chair.

“He told me,” Buffy licked her lips, but her tongue was as dry as they were. “Told me, uh,” she lifted her head and forced it out, “That the Chinese slayer said something as she died, but he didn’t know what. He said she was ready to die, that he saw it in her eyes.”

Giles took a sip from a glass of water and then held it to Buffy.

Dana slumped in her chair. Again she fingered the photo. “He was never here,” she said. “But he did worse. No hands. Can’t hurt me anymore.”

“Dana? Are you… are you yourself again?”

Her bound hands curled up to her neck, she giggled into her curled fingertips. “Chained him up. Told him I’d let him go if he was good. He was…good.” She giggled harder. “Brought the house down, didn’t he?”

Buffy felt the blood run out of her face. “Maybe this isn’t a good… Dana? Spike’s dead, sweetie.” She covered his smiling face with her palm. “This man… vampire… he’s gone. Forever gone. Poof!” Buffy snatched the photo and held it to her chest with a shaking hand.

Giles looked at her funny. She raised her brows at him in challenge. “There’s a lot more… important things you could be talking to her about than Spike.”

“Spike,” Dana said, and then descended into another series of syllables unintelligible to Buffy.

“The white man who is not a missionary,” Giles translated. “He called himself Spike. He spoke very poorly. He said ‘I will kill Saturday for you’ and I had to correct him on his death threat. To me. I always cared too much about… uh… grammar.”

Dana laughed, looking sane, now, relaxed. She looked to Buffy as she spoke again.

Giles grimaced. “The watcher-man spoke very well. I should have feared him more.”

“What language…?”

“Luganda. And I don’t understand it very well so please be quiet, Buffy. ‘The next… day? Week?” Giles formulated a question in hesitant syllables. Dana shook her head, correcting him.

“He followed me… watched when I killed the… train master? Yes you fool… (oh that's me again). He was a big, bad vampire boss, the Train Master. I hunted him for months. You ought to know about him, watcher-man. Spike… applauded when I killed him. Bloody typical.” Giles glanced at Buffy, still holding the photo flat against her chest. “Ahem. Sorry. She says… the watcher wanted me to go with him, to England. He said not to worry about the English vampire because he would follow, and with the train master gone, all need to be in Uganda had gone. But there are… many… demons. My people were not safe without me. I refused to go. He shot me, the… watcher.” Giles fell back again. There was a long pause before he translated Dana’s last sentence. “I never got to fight the funny vampire.”

“Spike would have wanted to kill that watcher,” Buffy said, trying to make it a joke.

Giles bent to retrieve a book from his left. He flipped it to a certain page. “I believe he did.” He handed the book to Buffy.

A young African woman looked back at her from a pixilated photo. She had an overbite and a wry grin. Next to her was a photo of a square-faced Englishman. Buffy closed the book without reading the captions.

“You miss him,” Dana said, again with the English accent. “He was a nice chap, for a vampire. Then, I think I like any vampire more than a Nazi, truth be told. One takes ones allies where one can, even disreputable ones like him.” She sighed. “I began to trust him. That was my problem.”

Giles snapped his fingers, excitedly reaching for the folder Buffy had left on the table before. “Excellent. Excellent. There was a slayer in England during World War Two… no one ever found out what happened to her. Let me find her name… Dana stay with me…”

But Dana had flinched backward at his finger-snap and was watching him warily, her whole demeanor changed from that of English-girl, as Buffy was now calling her in her mind.

“Dana?” Buffy touched her shoulder lightly.

Dana shook her touch off. “I’m not crazy. I see them.”

“We know,” Buffy said. “I see them too.” She set her hand on the table, then, near Dana’s, non-threatening. “Though… I mean, I get dreams. I see flashes now and again. I don’t know if it’s the same. Of course it isn’t the same for you. But you aren’t alone. There are other slayers. Like me.”

Dana put her fingertips on top of Buffy’s. “Not like you. You’re the only one who didn’t want to kill him. Even when I knew it wasn’t him, I wanted to keep cutting.”

Giles, disappointed in his search, laid his papers flat and stared at the two slayers’ hands. “Is she still speaking of Spike?”

“Yes,” Dana nodded, slowly, sagely. “If I can escape again, I’ll go back to LA for him. We need to talk.”

Buffy fumbled, putting the photo back in Giles’ folder. “He’s dead,” she said.

“Shot by police,” Dana said. She held her arms close to her body. “Take your pills. Good girl. Be still.”

Giles looked at his glasses in his hand. “We’re going about this wrong. The watchers…”

He swept the papers and books off the table. Both slayers jumped back at the sudden motion and the violence of fluttering paper.

Giles put his glasses back on. “Dana,” he said, looking straight at her. “The debriefing is over. We’re going to help you, do you understand? Help you understand the memories… those not your own and otherwise. Dana, we won’t hurt you. Not any more.”

Buffy squeezed Giles’ shoulder. “I’ll leave you guys alone now,” she said.

Giles patted her hand. There was a brightness to his eyes, but no other sign of emotion. “I imagine you’ve heard enough. Get some rest.”

She nodded.

As Buffy slipped out the door she heard Dana say, “She died, that girl. She died twice.”

As the door closed, Dana whispered, “I died three thousand times.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing the latest chapter of "Compatible Faults" I got a lot of Dana-on-the-mind. Mmmm Damage.


	2. Debriefing Dana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calling this one "Slayer Memories".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from Dana's perspective. I'll call this Chapter One, since I like "Debriefing Dana" standing on its own. I'll be alternating Buffy perspective in past-tense and Dana perspective in present-tense, moving toward a combined third person past-tense as Dana gets more lucid.
> 
> I know next to nothing about psychology or schizophrenia, so take my Dana with a grain of salt.

Dana dreams about The Vampire. She dreams about many vampires, she dreams about horrible monsters and she dies and dies and dies. But sometimes she kills and kills and kills, and she is getting better at focusing on those dreams, and the others become less frequent.

But more and more, lately, she dreams about him. Handless and sad and blonde. Irreverent with boot-polish black hair. “Not helpful,” the sarcastic voice in her mind says. (Sometimes Dana is Someone Else. Doctor Giles assures her it's not Multiple Personality Disorder. It's Something Else. But she’s learning to control that, too.) Casual and brunette and sloppy and vicious. And occasionally he would slip into her mind naked, beautiful and worshiping her. He does vague things with his hands and his mouth. She likes those dreams.

She wakes up once and someone has poured water all over the bed. She wonders if it is to try and make her sick or just to make her uncomfortable and she rips the sheets apart. Lady Doctor comes and tells her she is Awakening as a Woman and something about the pills having prevented that before. She hits Lady Doctor and is restrained. But the bed sheets are clean at least when she is tied down.

The next day she is given a book with colorful pictures of naked people and the doctors ask embarrassing questions. They are always asking embarrassing questions. “Do you like being able to hurt monsters?” They would never ask each other that.

They don't ask about sex, which is what the dreams are about. Dana isn't stupid.

It is confusing, but Dana is dealing. The world seems more solid these days. There are fewer pills anymore, and restraints, though they still lock the doors. The doctors here don’t flinch when they look at her drawings. They look like they expected her to draw blood and violence. “That’s very good, Dana,” Lady Doctor says, “A Raknath demon. You got the tail just right.”

The doctors in the Gray Place would peer at her drawings like there was a secret code hidden behind the crayon lines and ask her if the demon represented her father.

“You were treated heavily with anti-psychotics,” Doctor Giles says. Doctor Giles comes a lot, and looks at her like it’s his fault her mind doesn’t work anymore. “Because those treating you before thought the visions were, well, that they were the real problem. But the visions are real, Dana. It is one of the slayer’s powers. We won’t be trying to get rid of them because we can’t. But…” He leans forward as though this is Very Important, “They can’t harm you, Dana. They are only memories.”

But they can harm her. She dies and dies and dies. She wonders if They are only keeping her here to hurt her. They say they want to Help. Only Help. For Her Own Good. But there are pills and she isn’t allowed alone near the door.

“Dana?”

He tells her, “We believe you have a milder case of schizophrenia. It is a disease of the mind that trauma can sometimes trigger or exacerbate – make worse. We hope, given time, you will get better now that we know what happened, why you have the troubles you have. Do you want me to tell you more about schizophrenia?”

No matter what she says or doesn’t say, she knows the doctor will keep talking. These were the kind of things doctors always wanted to tell you, like names were magic and you could hold on to their tails and thus control them.

She likes Giles, though. He doesn’t make her Express Herself or take pills or do tests. He only comes to sit and talk or to watch her do what she was doing anyway. He has a face like a softball mitt. She had a softball mitt once. She wasn’t old enough to play, but her daddy had hopes, and she’d lie in her big girl bed and hold the mitt on her face to feel the soft leather and smell the summertime.

This is a thing from Before. Doctor Giles says that it’s important to remember Before. The Lady Doctor says it too and tries to get her to draw Before. Draw Mommy Before. Draw Daddy Before. She tries, but they always come out headless.

She holds Doctor Giles’ hand to her face and giggles at the feel of it, dry and wrinkly. He doesn’t pull away. He just asks, “Do you like my hand?” She nods against his palm. Yes, she likes hands. Hands hold the power.

Besides Doctor Giles there is Teacher, who comes every day after breakfast with his brown paper and big, colorful books. She likes Teacher better than Lady Doctor. He doesn’t ask her to Express Herself, but gives her easy instructions to follow. She fills pages with capital Gs and feels happy. She writes her name. She knew how to do that Before. She isn’t stupid. And now she can write “Vampire” because she asked to learn it special. Lady Doctor wants her to Write About How She Feels. She doesn’t. She writes “Vampire” and she writes “Dana”. She practices when Teacher isn’t there and thinks of his hair, which is tiny white springs against his chocolate-brown scalp. She can’t draw Teacher because her drawing paper is all white.

Lady Doctor brings the drawing paper. She also brings toys, dolls and puppets, and clearly thinks that Dana is Four Years Old. But if she doesn’t draw, Lady Doctor just keeps talking in her sing-song voice. It’s better to draw than listen to that. Sometimes Dana just pretends she IS four years old.

They wanted her to draw something happy, so she drew The Vampire. She drew him how she likes him best – Lemon Ice crayon for the hair and French Blue for eyes. Lots of black crayon for his shirt, which runs off the end of the page.

She likes French Blue a lot.

She ends his arms in nice red circles.

The Slayer comes to visit her after she draws The Vampire. She should think, ‘A Slayer’, not ‘The’, because Buffy says there are many of them, and She Is Like Her. Dana is just like Buffy. A Slayer. Except Buffy can go through the brown-painted metal door at the end of the hall whenever she wants.

There are other slayers. They don’t say much. They stand around the edges of the room and look at Dana like they fear they might catch something from her. And if she tries to go out the Brown Metal Door or break the Black Mesh Window, A Slayer steps in front of her. If she breaks A Slayer’s arm, she gets a shot and the soft cotton restraints and Doctor Giles stands over her a long time talking slowly about disappointment. His eyes are the color of blue jeans and this is worse than just being restrained or even beaten. He talks relentlessly, dripping pity and sympathy on her with his eyes.

She stops breaking people’s arms. She writes “I Won’t Hurt Anymore” very neatly, in red crayon. She asks Teacher for the word “anymore”. He is very proud of her Sentence. She is rewarded with a Trip to the Garden, though there are more slayers than ever and they watch her like rats.

It’s the day after the Trip to the Garden. This is now. Dana is getting better about time. Buffy has come to see her. It’s the third time Buffy has visited, since she met her in the interrogation room.

Buffy has seen The Vampire drawing and wants to talk about it. She has the picture with her, hidden under her jacket. Dana hides sharp things like that, but the nurses always take them away and she doesn’t get to wear a jacket anymore.

Buffy holds up the picture so that it faces Dana. Dana can’t do that. When she holds up pictures to show, she holds them toward herself, because the blank back feels wrong.

“Is this supposed to be Spike?”

“Yes,” Dana says. She is getting good at Answering Questions. It helps that there is no punishment anymore if she doesn’t.

Buffy’s chin lowers. Her eyes get droopy on the sides. “Do you understand? Do you know who Spike is?”

“He killed me twice. But it wasn’t me. It was a Slayer Memory. He wasn’t here.”

Buffy smiles, but her eyes are wet. “That’s right,” she says. She turns the picture back toward herself and looks at it. “You probably hate him,” she says, very quietly.

“No,” Dana says. “He’s funny and nice sometimes.”

Buffy laughs, just a little, like she’s coughing up something. She puts her arms around Dana. Dana feels very uncomfortable with this and wants her to Get Away Now. She says so.

Buffy drops her arms and goes back to sitting where she was. She is really crying now. “I’m sorry,” she says. She touches the back of Dana’s hand briefly. Dana snatches her hand away.

Buffy smoothes the crumpled drawing on her lap. “I loved him,” she says.

Dana is still reacting to having been Touched and wondering if she shouldn’t be happy to be hugged and maybe she should hug Buffy because Buffy is crying.

“I want him,” Dana says, meaning The Vampire, but Buffy hands her the picture. Dana looks at her drawing and thinks she did a pretty good job, this time. She’s getting better at drawing.

Buffy leans over her drawing. Her blonde hair is loose and touches Dana’s arm. Dana doesn’t mind this time. Buffy sniffles a little, but isn’t crying any more. She points to the red circles. “What is he holding?”

“Those are his arms where I cut them off so he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

In a different sort of voice, Buffy says, “Oh.”

“He didn’t hurt me. Those were Slayer Memories.”

“Right.” Buffy nods at the picture. She doesn’t look at Dana. “I wonder when Spike had his hands cut off? He must have hated that. You never met him, I mean, really. In the flesh and living Technicolor. Er. Unliving.” Buffy’s hand traces the pink line that is supposed to be Spike’s cheek. “But no one could fidget like Spike. I think it physically pained him to sit still.”

“Sit still,” Dana says, remembering. “Its always important to sit still. Don’t move. Be quiet.”

Buffy shifts in her seat. “Poor you,” she says. She tucks a loose lock of hair behind Dana’s ear. Dana twitches away from the contact. “Would you like me to visit more often?”

“Yes,” Dana says.

Buffy touches the back of her hand. Dana doesn’t pull away. Buffy’s fingers are smooth and soft. It feels like Mommy, Before. That makes her feel guilty and sad, but she also likes it. Likes being touched and not being afraid of it. She wraps her hand around Buffy's.

They smile at each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey: Check it out! We wons an award!
> 
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> AND A judge's choice:  
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> 
> _Slayer Memories by Hello_Spikey - Dana made such a brief appearance in the show, but the idea of a damaged slayer, who could not differentiate between reality and the shared memories and visions of her calling, was really compelling. Hello_Spikey brought this character center stage in Slayer Memories, getting into Dana's head in a moving, believable way. The fact that her broken memories drive the entire plot is very original, and the sections from her point of view realistically track from endearing to frightening and everywhere in between. Buffy's relationship with Dana is very interesting to read, not only when they connect, but also when they cannot seem to understand each other, no matter how hard they try. In the final chapters, the interactions between all of the characters were pitch perfect, culminating in an open ending that left me wanting more._


	3. Slayer Memories, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's the first Buffy POV section of the continuation of "Debriefing Dana".

Kimberly Eggers, “Call me Kimmie”, was the clinical psychologist Giles found. She’d worked with the watchers before which helped a lot. Job interviews went easier around the council if you didn’t have to go through the “vampires are real” part.

Buffy was pretty sure Kimmie had believed in vampires before coming to work for the council, and possibly fairies and aliens too.

“What adult woman goes by ‘Kimmie”?” Buffy demanded, arms crossed, scowling through the wire-mesh protected windows of the make-shift psycho ward they’d made out of the north end of Giles’ estate. Kimmie was with Dana, probably driving the poor girl mad – madder – with her exaggerated expressions and gestures.

“Careful Buff, glass condo talk there,” Xander said. He shifted his weight onto his back leg, squinted out of his good eye, and threw another knife at the target pinned to the big old oak tree. “How was that?”

Buffy tore her eyes away from the windows. Oh, right, she was supposed to be helping Xander. She walked up to the tree and wrenched the fat throwing-dagger out of it. “Turn around, five paces, again,” she said.

“Yes, mistress,” he rolled his eye, but turned and counted out steps.

“I don’t think they’re helping Dana as much as they could be,” Buffy said. “I mean, she’s a teen-ager and they have her doing all these kindergarten arts and crafts. You can see she finds it humiliating!”

“Buff?” Xander held out his hand expectantly. When Buffy didn’t respond he said, “Kinda can’t throw a dagger you’re holding.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” Buffy handed it over.

She watched dutifully as Xander threw again, and missed. He sighed and muttered and went to retrieve the dagger himself from the grass at the base of the tree. “They call him Xander: Root Slayer,” he said.

“I just think she should be training. Learning to control her strength, like I did. We can secure the gym just as easily, and hey! Maybe if we weren’t constantly treating her like a prisoner, she wouldn’t try to get away. Does anybody think of that?”

Xander scraped dirt off his dagger against the edge of his boot, leaning against the tree for support. “Buff? Why don’t we call it quits? Your mind’s not on this. I could get Rosita to work with me.”

Buffy grimaced. “Sorry. Maybe we shouldn’t practice on this side of the building.”

Xander shrugged. “It’s the fattest tree. Give me a few months, and I’ll be ready for those skinny oaks on the north lawn.”

***

“We’re in the middle of a therapy session,” Kimmie said with the most insincere of smiles. “Why don’t you come back later?”

Dana looked up miserably from a paper covered in looping pink flowers.

Buffy held her ground. “Actually, I came to talk about that. I think we should… for therapy’s sake… I mean, start Dana on some occupational therapy.” Buffy nodded, proud of herself for coming up with the term.

Kimmie frowned. “I’m not sure we have the facilities, and I’d hate to have her out in the public. She is a very special patient.”

“I was thinking more ‘slayer’ occupation,” Buffy said. “We have the best facility in the world for that.”

“You want to train her to fight?” Kimmie lost her ever-present smile, though her drawn-on eyebrows were as high as ever. “An unstable psychotic? You want to give her martial training?”

“She isn’t going to get stable sitting around here all day with nothing to do.” Buffy crossed her arms and stepped closer, noting with pleasure the anxious step back the therapist took. “And she is in the room, by the way. I hate it when people talk about me like I’m not there, don’t you, Dana?” Buffy turned to the mad slayer.

Dana’s hands parted over her drawing. She set down her crayon and looked at Buffy, attentive, but clearly not knowing how to react or what to say.

“Would you like to learn some tricks?” Buffy asked. “Some…” she glanced at Kimmie’s horrified expression – rendered clown-like from the drawn-on eyebrows. “Some cheerleading?” Buffy smiled, proud of her concession.

Kimmie frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose…”

“Cheerleading?” Dana tilted her head.

“You know, like at football games?” Buffy stepped back and raised her arms, elbow then extend, one at a time, with imagined pom-poms.

Dana smiled, a flicker of eagerness breaking through her usual mask.

“I really must object. Dana isn’t an ordinary patient. She has super-strength.”

“Pfft. So do I. I got over it.” Buffy held a hand out to Dana.

Staring for a moment, Dana slowly took the proffered hand and let Buffy draw her to her feet.

“Are we going out the brown door?” Dana asked.

Kimmie shook her head vehemently. “Absolutely not. Miss Summers, if you insist on having some training exercise, it can be done in here, and AFTER Dana’s art therapy session.”

“Dana, do you even LIKE art therapy?”

Dana quickly shook her head.

“I must strenuously object! You cannot interrupt my planned therapy. Dana needs a disciplined schedule, an orderly…”

“Yeah, whatever. Come on, Dana, can you do jumping jacks?”

Sometimes, Dana would get the most childish looks on her face. Joy. She clapped her hands and nodded. She was easy to love at times like those.

Kimmie watched with a disapproving scowl as Buffy got Dana to do some calisthenics.

So Buffy didn’t know jack about psychology – well, she never did finish Dr. Walsh’s course – but she did know that SHE, at least, dealt with emotional trauma best through exercise.

Not that she was going to dwell on how she’d used that strategy in the past… already she sometimes saw Dana looking at her and wondered what she saw, if she knew Buffy’s every horrible little secret.

She was waiting, she realized, to find a pornographic picture among Dana’s childlike crayon drawings. Perhaps that time at the Bronze… you know, just to be extra-embarrassing.

Buffy smiled at Kimmie now and again, to reassure her, as she tried to think of ways to put martial-arts moves into cheers. She was just like Mr. Miyagi! Wax on, wax off – pom-pom left, pom-pom right.

Buffy organized her schedule, and no one (except Kimmie) complained or even noticed. Three days a week, she went down to Dana’s room and they practiced cheers for Team Slayer between Art Therapy and dinner.

Dana exercising reminded Buffy of doing cheer routines with Dawn, when Dawn was seven and Buffy was trying out for Junior High cheer squad and even an obnoxious little sister beat out stuffed animals for practice. Buffy realized she must have been horribly bossy – telling Dawn to stand here, stand there, raise your arms, no not like that, dummy!

Her only excuse was, hey, made-up memories! (She wondered how people without made-up memories dealt with their casual cruelty to younger siblings.)

Dawn had been like Dana was now – not interested in the perfect control, just enjoying the motion of her body and playing with the pom-poms.

Buffy bought the pom-poms special, from a cheer supplier online – no tacky little-kid pom-poms, or sport-fan fakes, these were the real McCoy. Dana delighted in stuffing her face into the big puffs of plastic, or shaking them to hear their unique noise.

Buffy hadn’t felt nostalgic for cheer in years. She forgot about her sneaky plan for martial arts training, and revised all the cheers she remembered from her old school, and the few she’d learned for try-outs at Sunnydale.

It was therapy for both of them, really.

One day Buffy came in, and Dana held a picture out to her. It was Spike, again. Dana smiled at her in what Buffy was sure was a knowing way.

It was creepy. Dana was innocent, practically a kid. Why did Buffy assume she was leering?

Dana was getting better at drawing. Spike was standing in this one, his black coat standing out stiffly from him on the sides. Two blue circles for eyes and a cartoon fang mouth, but she knew it was supposed to be him. Little pink slashes for his cheekbones. She wondered how he’d feel, seeing this, and her eyes misted. She imagined him acting affronted, but secretly pleased, in that way of his that fooled no one. “And she’s got my coat all wrong,” he might say, pointing disdainfully at the black trapezoid that stuck out from his stiff form.

“That’s very good. You don’t have to keep giving me drawings,” Buffy said. “I know… I know you’re trying to be nice, but seeing Spike, knowing he’s gone, it doesn’t make me happy. You understand? It hurts to remember.” Buffy put the picture back on the little table face-down. “Why don’t we leave the past behind and work on the future? I was thinking that we could perform, for the others. What do you think about that? Me and you, doing cheers for the watcher’s council? I’ve wrote some… they’re kind of lame. ‘Giles, Giles, he’s our man, reading books only he can’.” Buffy shook her head.

Dana frowned and flipped the picture over. She slapped her hand on it, angry, and glared at Buffy as though daring her to touch it.

“Okay… okay, sorry. Didn’t mean to cover up Spike. He’s very pretty. Really.”

Dana raised her eyes to Buffy’s. “Why are you sad? Doctor Giles told me his arms are back on. He’s not gone. Only this isn’t LA, that’s all. He’s there. We’re in England.”

“No, don’t be silly, he…” Buffy frowned. “Slayer memory?”

Dana shook her head.

***

Buffy’s heels clacked deliberately down the length of the second-floor salon. Giles rose from the couch where he was reading the newspaper. “Buffy? I’m really not in the mood for interruption…”

“Good. I have enough mood for both of us.” Buffy stopped directly in front of him, every line of her countenance screaming her desire to hit him. Instead, she pushed a piece of cheap drawing paper at him. “He’s alive, Giles. He’s alive, and you knew about it.”

“What? Who…”

“Spike.” Buffy clenched her fists. “You did it to me again. Is this to protect me, somehow? I’m not a teenager anymore.”

Giles sank back into his seat. “Oh.” He set his newspaper aside.

“’Oh’, he says. Dana kept babbling about having met Spike, but she’s crazy, right? Then she says ‘Doctor Giles told me he’s all right.’ Isn’t that nice.”

“It was his decision, Buffy, not mine.”

“Who’s decision?”

Giles sighed. He took off his glasses. “Spike’s.”

Buffy felt a hard lump in her throat. Up until just that moment, a large part of her hadn’t really believed. “He’s alive,” she said, again.

“Undead, still, yes,” Giles said. He rubbed his temple. “Death isn’t what it used to be.”


	4. Slayer Memories, Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Against all reason, I continue this fic. More Dana POV. Disturbing craziness!

Buffy didn’t want to talk about The Vampire before, but now, Buffy wants to talk about him all the time.

Dana thinks Buffy is Not Well.

“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kiss him, then kill him, then resurrect him so I can kill him again,” she says, pacing. Dana isn’t crazy. She knows that none of that is possible and Buffy is making some kind of un-funny joke.

It’s nighttime. Lady Doctor has gone home at long last and Buffy has come outside Visiting Time to see her. The lights are off, though, so no one will know. The white moon makes stripes across the floor from the black bars in the window.

“Did he say why he didn’t want me to know? Was it Angel’s stupid macho bull about protecting me from the terrible future of an undead boyfriend? I’ll kill them both. Double-slay. Angel had to have known. Why didn’t HE call me? Did Angel talk to you?”

Dana no longer feels Very Good at answering Questions. All she knows of angels are pictures. Angels aren’t real. Angel is a girl’s name. She shakes her head, not knowing how else to answer.

Buffy crouches in front of Dana. She puts her Hands on Dana’s Hands. “You have to tell me something. Tell me what you saw of him. Anything he said, no matter how strange.”

Dana shakes her head again.

Buffy runs to the drawing-table. She throws Dana’s drawings around until she finds one she likes and picks it up. “This, what is this?” Buffy asks, and shows Dana the drawing.

The vampire is chained to the post. His Hands are gone. His eyes are extra big circles of French Blue. He’s just coming out from the Brown. (Brown makes you sleepy).

“I checked all the council records on William the Bloody. He never lost his hands. There’s no record of it. And I’m not even sure a vampire _can_ lose a limb like that and grow it back.”

Dana feels guilty, though she never had before. Not for him. “I cut his hands off. So he couldn’t hurt me.”

“Oh god.” Buffy covers her mouth. “You did this. Not – not a slayer memory?”

“He killed me,” Dana says, and it sounds petulant, not like she really believes it, which she does. Sort of. “He killed me twice. And my watcher. And my family – except that wasn’t him. He was never here. I – I get confused.”

Dana doesn’t want to look at Buffy, now. Buffy’s eyes are hard like broken glass. “Is he still alive? When did you last see him? Did his – oh god – did his hands get re-attached?”

Dana points at the picture. “That’s how I last saw him. Before Andrew and the Slayers took me away. They kept me tied down. They said they wanted to help me but they still kept me tied down.”

Buffy waves the picture back and forth. She sets it down. She throws her hands up and paces. Her shirt is pink. She turns to Dana and looks a moment like she is going to hit Dana. Dana puts up her arms.

Buffy wraps her arms around Dana. “I’m sorry,” she says, with tears in her voice. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. God, you didn’t know what you were doing.”

Buffy’s eyes and cheeks are red. She steps back and rubs her face with one hand. “I need to go. I need to think about this.”

Buffy closes the big brown door behind her. She leaves Dana alone.

Dana looks at the picture. She’s getting better at drawing. He doesn’t look quite like he should, but you can see his horror.

She did know what she was doing. Why do they always say that? Hands have power. Hands can Do. She took his hands. Took away his power and made it Hers. Dana smiles. She doesn’t feel sorry for that.

***

Buffy doesn’t come back at her usual time the next day. Buffy doesn’t come back for three days.

Dana is getting better about Time. Teacher is Very Pleased with her. They have started working on Math and Science. The workbooks are fun, slippery paper on the outside and rough drawing paper on the inside. She can waggle them back and forth. They aren’t intimidating like the books Teacher keeps with him. The math workbook is red plaid on the cover and she gets to use Pen in it.

Still, she misses Buffy. She plays with the pompoms but she can’t remember the Routine without Buffy there. Or she can, but it doesn’t make sense to Do without Buffy there, raising her hand when Dana raises hers like they are Connected.

Four days later, Buffy comes after Visiting Hours. Dana knows this is Bad.

Buffy has a coat with a hood on. It is orange and drawn up around her face. She hands Dana a blue coat. “We’re leaving,” she says.

Dana puts on the blue coat. It smells like rain. Buffy sets a duffel bag on the bed and starts taking Dana’s clothes and putting them in it.

“Where are we going?”

“Sh. Talk soft. Like secrets, remember?”

Dana nods. She loves secrets.

“We’re going to LA,” Buffy says. “Me and you. But it’s a secret, understand?”

Dana nods vigorously. She is going out the Brown Door. Her heart thumps so hard in her chest she looks down to see if she can see it flexing the skin.

Buffy finishes filling the duffel. She takes Dana’s hand and leads her to the door. Buffy crouches low as she opens it, and peers left, then right, a long time before she runs forward.

She drags Dana after her faster than Dana was prepared to go. She stumbles a little, but then they are running, and Dana holds her hand tight over her mouth to keep from laughing. No one runs as fast as Buffy and Dana and they run together so fast! It’s fun.

There is a car, engine running. There is a man in the car. The man has an eye-patch. He looks evil. Dana stops. Buffy throws the duffel in the back seat and turns to her. “Come on,” she says.

Dana looks at the one-eyed man. He has both hands on the steering wheel. He raises one, fingers splayed. He shows his Hand to her. It’s a wave. She knows that; she’s not stupid. He can’t hit her from there.

“Come on,” Buffy says, again, “It’s just Xander. Do you want me to sit in the back with you?”

Dana takes Buffy’s hand and doesn’t let go. She wants her to sit in the back with her.

So they do.

Dana never stops watching Xander. He might do a Bad Thing. Men Do Bad Things. Except Teacher. And Doctor Giles. They’re too old to be Bad.

Xander peeks at her with his one eye in the rear-view mirror. “I still gotta say, Buff, I don’t support this plan. You should leave the cr… uh, our newest slayer here.”

Dana hates Xander. He calls her crazy in his head. Her hand tightens on Buffy’s.

“She’s seen him. She can take me to him. I just hope I’m not too late.”

Xander shakes his head. “I still say, Giles or Andrew know where he is.”

“They wouldn’t lie to me, Xander. Well, Andrew would, but not Giles. Not again.” Buffy twisted her hand out of Dana’s and patted her arm. She flexes her fingers. “Besides, if Andrew knew, he’d give. I intimidated the midichlorians out of him.”

“Woah! Buff! Geek points!”

“It’s not like I know what they are… that’s just what he said.” Buffy sounds like she is lying.

Dana doesn’t know what “midichlorians” are. She decides it must not be Important.

They are going to be on an airplane. Dana is handed her own ticket and passport. She gets to hold these things like a Normal Person and she sits in her own seat and isn’t tied to anything.

They ask her if she wants anything to drink, and Buffy tells them to bring Ginger Ale.

Dana decides she doesn’t like Ginger Ale. But she drinks it because Buffy does.

“It’s a very long way to LA,” Buffy says. “You might want to try to sleep.”

Dana can’t close her eyes, even though it’s night-time and she should be asleep already. She stares out the little oval window at the Black. She plays with the buttons and switches and knobs while Buffy explains what each one is for.

Buffy takes a magazine out of the seat-back pocket in front of them and opens it on Dana’s lap. “Look at the pretty pictures, Dana,” she says. “I’m going to take a nap.”

Dana is going to LA. She is returning to The Vampire. Will he be where she left him? Vampires don’t die, with their hands cut off. They don’t die unless you cut off the head or puncture the heart. You have to keep cutting until you see dust. She didn’t see dust. He is still there. Still hers.

She looks at Buffy, whose forehead is crinkled right between her brows, though her eyes are closed. Buffy wants The Vampire to be hers. Dana isn’t stupid. She knows who she is, in the Slayer Memories, when The Vampire doesn’t kill her for loving her but just loves her. She is Buffy, and The Vampire touches her all over. He bites his lower lip. His eyes squinch closed. He opens them again, he breathes loud, mouth and nose and eyes all open to her. He loves her. But he doesn't. Those touches aren’t Hers. They are a Slayer Memory.

Maybe, though, they can share.


	5. Slayer Memories, Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffy POV time. These chapters come out short, but, I dunno, for me they're so intense and hard to write, so I guess short works.
> 
> Dana and Buffy arrive in LA! Whatever shall happen?

Dana was well-behaved on the plane – perfect, in fact. She stayed in her seat and looked out the window and ate the little bag of peanuts.

Buffy wished she could be as calm, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to trust Dana not to flip out at any moment. So she got very little rest on the flight. The twelve hour flight. UGH.

Her knees hurt from sitting too long so Buffy paced the aisles and practiced katas in the space by the bathrooms. The flight stewards looked askance at her a lot.

She had no idea what she was doing. She looked down the row at Dana, sitting in her chair, headphones on, watching in-flight movie number three with rapt attention.

It was _Legally Blonde_. Blonde jokes? So not a Buffy thing.

When they arrived in LA, she had to get a cab to Wolfram and Hart – she had the address written down. Angel was there. He would help her, she was sure, no matter what Giles said or Xander expected; neither of them understood the pressures of the hero role. She did. She knew that sometimes you had to do things that seemed evil to do good.

 _Like spring an unstable slayer from custody?_ An unwanted part of Buffy’s mind accused her.

No. She wasn’t unstable. Dana was perfectly… stabilized. At least, she didn’t seem to mind sudden changes in her surroundings, just as content to be swept away in the middle of the night and put on a plane as not.

Probably because she’d never had control over her surroundings.

Buffy decided not to spend too much time thinking about that. If she got through all this, and Giles didn’t kill her, she might try to go back to school and get that psychology degree.

***

LA hit her senses with sudden heat, light, and that California smell – she couldn’t explain it – as soon as she stepped out of the anonymous air-conditioning of the airport. She waved a cab down. Dana followed her obediently, her duffel over her shoulders, smiling in that strange, innocent way.

Buffy lugged her own bag and waved Dana to follow her into the cab. No checked luggage, no thanks on the trunk, and that stale car-air. She handed over the slip of paper with Angel’s new address on it. The cabbie raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

Buffy didn’t know quite what to expect. “Evil law firm” brought up first a series of jokes about redundancy and second pictures of dark towers with rolling clouds permanently ensconced on their high battlements.

It was a quiet, unassuming office building, all glass and steel. Not even the tallest on its block. Buffy gaped at pleasant, civilized surroundings. Beige. Evil should not have this much beige.

“Can I help you?” A young woman in a smart blue suit stepped in front of them. She smiled and clasped her hands in front of her. “You look lost. Are you here to see someone specific?”

“Angel,” Dana said, and it sounded like a lunatic thing to say. Well, she was staring up at the skylight four stories above, visible through the winding stairway. “We came to see an angel.”

Buffy grimaced. “His _name_ is Angel. He’s not… well, you’d probably know that. I was told he worked here?”

The businesswoman’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Mr. Angel? You want the executive floor – level four. Elevators are that way. Introduce yourself at reception.”

She then hurried away.

Not a good sign.

An ordinary, not in any way clearly evil, elevator took them up smoothly and opened into an ordinary hallway, filled with sunshine from the skylight overhead and a great open feeling with the stairs winding down to the lower levels below. Buffy stepped forward and scanned the walls for a “Reception, that way” sign.

“Oh. My. God. Buffy!” An oddly familiar voice screeched. “Security to Executive Floor, like, stat! Security! We have a vampire slayer!”

Dana dropped her duffel and darted around Buffy.

Buffy spun to see her snatch the blonde receptionist’s hand away from her intercom, lift her by her neck and press her into the wall. “Vampire,” Dana said. “Head and heart. Cut until you see dust.”

Harmony squealed and flailed.

“Harmony?” Buffy squinted. “Okay, that wins the ‘not expected’ award. Dana, put her down.”

Dana… growled.

Buffy put her hand on Dana’s shoulder. “Dana. Down. Put the vampire down. We want to talk to her.” The slayers locked eyes and silently waged a battle of wills.

Dana blinked first, looking a little confused, she let Harmony down.

“Why are you so _mean_?” Harmony demanded, face scrunched up as she was slowly released. “And where is security? I called, like, five million hours ago!”

Buffy forced Dana behind her. “Harmony, what are you doing here?”

“I work here!” Harmony straightened her dress. “And I’m not your nemesis anymore. I’m a legitimate, contributing member of the community. Oh, thank god, Bossy!”

Harmony ran past the slayers in the mincing steps her high-heels required. “Bossy, Blondie-bear! We have slayers!”

Buffy turned to see Harmony throw her pink arms around… She blanked, unable to move, speak, breathe, think… what was that other one? Think?

“Oh,” Spike said. “Bugger.”

Angel frowned, looking from Buffy to his traumatized personal assistant and back to Buffy, who had another slayer in tow, who was disinterestedly examining the ceramic unicorns on Harmony’s desk.

Spike patted Harmony’s sides. “Ease up there, Harm old girl. You’re safe. Need to breathe.”

“You won’t let her stake me, will you, Blondie-bear? You’ll protect me.”

“Harm, love, I staked you myself once, remember?”

“Vampires,” Dana said, half a whine. She tugged Buffy’s sleeve. “Cut. Heads and hearts. Vampires.”

Buffy slowly awoke to the knowledge that Dana was asking permission. “Oh. My. God. No. No… good vampires – no cut. No… Spike.” Her hair was a mess. She was suddenly painfully aware of how a mess her hair was, and here was not just one, but two former loves. And Harmony. It was like a bad high school nightmare.

“Buffy,” Spike said, barely a whisper, nodding his head a fractional inch as he eased Harmony off of him.

Angel half-smiled. “This, uh, yeah. Funny story. Spike’s alive, and Harmony’s my secretary.” He spread his arms as if to say, “Who knew?”

“Personal assistant,” Harmony quickly corrected, moving to stand behind Angel.

“I’m either going to barf, or faint. Pretty soon,” Buffy said.

Angel stepped aside. “Harmony, get a guest suite for the slayers, and have catering bring up ice water.”

“And chocolates,” Spike said, staring at Buffy in wonder. “She likes chocolates.”

“I know that,” Angel said, “I know just as much about Buffy as you do, but now is not the time to give her more food.”

A few things happened all at once then. Angel and Spike launched into an argument, fully-formed, as though it had been going and was just interrupted when they first entered the room. Some guards in black flack jackets carrying nightsticks filed into the reception area, taking up positions along the wall. Buffy tried to size them up as a threat, but they were looking mostly at Angel, as though awaiting some signal, so her eyes kept following theirs back to the confusion before her.

Dana launched herself at Harmony, only to be snatched back by Spike before the girl could plunge a Hello Kitty pencil (probably taken from Harmony’s desk) into the receptionist’s heart.

Dana then twisted, eyes opening wide as she looked into the face of her captor. Spike frowned, recognizing her. Angel was still talking, something about security, while he wrenched the pencil from Dana’s fingers. Dana didn’t put up much struggle, she was grabbing Spike’s forearm and pushing the sleeve back, marveling at the unbroken skin.

"Hey," Harmony said, taking a fractional step toward Spike, and Dana turned and snarled at her over Spike's arm, like a dog holding a bone and warding another away.

Spike was looking at Angel and mouthing something, slowly, like he was holding a time-bomb only Angel was in reach to diffuse. That was probably a decent analogy for the situation.

“Barf,” Buffy said, as if deciding, and turned promptly to fall to the ground by Harmony’s wastepaper basket.


	6. Slayer Memories, Part Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dana POV. Um... really, really weird, I confess. Don't stint on the feedback, if it doesn't work, I'll revise.
> 
> Also, I bring back some of the stuff from "Debriefing Dana". I couldn't bring myself to name the Chinese slayer - I mean, I couldn't find a name for her anywhere official but I feel like she's someone else's character, surely she has a name? Somewhere? Otherwise I was so totally gonna give her a friend of mine's name just to do the homage thing.

Buffy is Sick.

Yellow makes you sick.

The Vampire is looking at her. She shouldn’t say ‘The Vampire’ because there are Lots. She feels them tickling the back of her brain and itching in her gut: Her Vampire, Angel, The Pink Girl.

Spike. It is strange to see him and know him for who he is. And she knows him so well: she knows how he looks when he cries and when he laughs and when he has his hands around your neck.

His hands are long-fingered and supple. She remembers the white stringy bits and texture of the muscle when she sawed through it – the meat went quickly, pulping into a blood slush, but the tendons were trouble, catching on the tines and stretching. They all seem to be back where they started, she touches his arm and feels the strings and ropes underneath.

His eyes aren’t quite French Blue, in real life. They are greyer and they move when she moves. His whole face moves when he talks. It is a pretty face, much prettier than she could draw it. “This is Dana,” He says. “Peaches,” he then says, which makes no sense. “This is Dana.”

Dana smiles.

“Oh, don’t look so pleased, princess. I’m not happy to see you. Angel, what do we do?”

Angel. Dana looks at Angel. He looks like he frowns a lot, like he is doing now. “Just… hold on to her. Buffy…”

Angel helps Buffy to her feet and someone appears with water and a towel. There are people everywhere. Dana sinks closer to Spike. She’ll be safe next to him, unless he decides to kill her again.

Buffy is going away with Angel. Spike objects, he wants to go, too, but he has to Watch The Crazy Slayer, alright?

Dana frowns at Angel. She doesn’t like being called crazy and he says it like he doesn’t expect her even to notice. And Buffy is angry now, and tugging Angel away. Perhaps she will kill him. Dana is confused. She doesn’t know what to do.

But Her Vampire is holding her. She leans back against his chest. It feels just like in her memories – the ones that aren’t hers. She loves the shapes of it, under his shirt. She rubs her back against it. He stiffens and pushes her away from him.

“Angel! Come back! Wait a minute!” And then, quietly, he says, “Oh, bugger me sideways, what am I going to do with you?”

She loves his voice. She turns and rests her chin on his shoulder, laughing at the feel of him taking in a breath against her. “I know who you are,” she says.

“That’s… that’s good, pidge.” He pats her back.

He smells like old leather and smoke. She runs her hands over his arms; they’re black. “It’s the same coat,” she says. “My coat.”

He stiffens. “Do you mean what I think you mean, Sybil?”

“You’re a pig, Spike,” she says. And laughs. It’s one of the things Buffy says a lot in her memories. (She says it when he makes her unable to say anything else. He makes it hard for Buffy to think, with his blue eyes and small pink tongue.)

“Right,” Spike says. “They always leave the sack o’ hammers with me.” The Vampire squints at her. He looks worried. “Let’s get off on the right foot, first. I understand why you did what you did,” he says. “Not mad. Sorry you had to live through all what you lived through, and memories of things I’ve done to boot. But you’re not going to try an’ chop bits off of me again, are you?”

She shakes her head, vigorously, but not because she means it. She doesn’t want The Vampire to be afraid of her. Something in her wants very, very much to chop bits off of him. Or to wrap her hands around his throat and squeeze. Or twist his head sharply so the neck bones crunch and break.

She also wants Spike to touch her like he touched Buffy, to touch secret parts of her that feel good. She can imagine it so well she finds herself rubbing against him.

He holds her shoulders too tight with his hands and pushes his arms out straight, keeping her from him. “Harm! You have to help me with this!”

“Eew,” says the vampire girl. “I told you, only boy, boy, girl. Or…”

“Yeah, that actress -- who could forget? Not that kind of help, you daft bint! Get her off of me!”

“Oh no. I’m not getting within striking distance of a vampire slayer. Hello? Vampire?” The girl vampire moves papers around on her desk. “Guest suite 2 is all ready, just throw her in there and lock the door. I’m going to go make sure Bossy isn’t getting turned into dust by my former arch-nemesis. No offense, Spikey, but he signs my paychecks.”

“You’re all heart, Harm.”

Dana doesn’t like the way Spike is holding her. She twists out of his hard hands and turns to face him, fists raised.

He backs up, holds his palms up to her. “Easy, girly. Not going to hurt you.”

She laughs at that. “I know.”

Very slowly he steps closer to her and puts his hand on her elbow. “Let’s get you out of the traffic pattern, yeah? Bet you’d like to be somewhere quiet and not too distracting. We’ll settle you in and you can just, you know, _not_ kill me for a few while Peaches and the Slayer sort things out.”

She’s happy he’s touching her again and so she lets him lead her down the corridor. He looks in front of them, to see where they are going and not bump into people, but he keeps looking back at her as well.

“What about Angel?” he asks. “Is he bubbling up in your subconscious too?”

The vampire is being very silly. She giggles.

“No? Well, good. Serve the poufter right not to be the center of attention for a change. Not, mind you, that I’m preferring your attention to what he’s getting right now.” Spike’s jaw is ticking because he’s holding it so tight. She watches it.

He leads her to a room that smells of new carpet and paint. He closes the door. There is a bed made neatly with a brown blanket and a silver table and a big black chair. He sits in the black chair and puts his chin on his hands. He looks very hard at Dana, like he is trying to see through her.

She doesn’t like it. She stares right back.

“Can you really remember it?” He asks. “Do you, did you feel it? Could I ask you questions about them, learn about their lives and understand them through you?”

“Sometimes I’m someone else,” Dana says. She doesn’t like it. He is trying to make her be someone else with his hard eyes. She sits down on the bed and looks at a book sitting on the table. It has delicate pages like onionskin.

Spike stands and walks back and forth. Dana wants to turn and watch him – it makes her nervous to have him moving behind her, but she doesn’t want his bright eyes to force her to be someone else.

“I never even learned her name, the first slayer I killed. I was young, and, lets face it, evil. I never thought of her life, her struggle, just what she represented as an opponent: the greatest challenge I could set myself. I thought a good fight was respect. Thought a real hard struggle made death good. God, how fuckin’ self-centered I was. Naïve. No one wants to die, there is no good death – and this is coming from someone who managed the coveted ‘burned alive to save the world’ trick. IF there were such a thing as a good death, that’d be it.”

Dana feels it swelling in her, like a burp, like sickness. A memory not her own, and if she looks back at him, she will speak in another voice and she doesn’t want to! She stares at her hands and bites her lip hard.

“Wish I could tell her, I dunno, that it wasn’t for nothing? Don’t know if that’s true or not, or if she’d accept an apology – such a weak thing, saying you’re sorry. Doesn’t do a damn thing. But the slayer line, they’re winning now, aren’t they? Her legacy, that’s you, partially. Her legacy lives on. Think she’d like to know that? Or would it be as fuckin’ hollow as an apology from a thrill-seeking vampire?”

Dana isn’t Dana: the nearly blank result of a life in institutions and captivity falls away easily, or maybe it’s still there, just it’s like a sponge, and soaks up memories into its empty pores. Now she knows skies that stretch to the horizon and vistas of fierce beauty. Her parents aren’t dead, but they fear her. This makes her sad a little, but also proud. Men look at you differently, when they respect your strength, and she likes those looks. She remembers now The Vampire as a strange apparition, skin almost transparent, alien to the proper dark color of normal people. But she also sees other memories, layered over these. She understands everything a little better.

She turns to look the Vampire in the eye and when words come out of her mouth, they are in an older language. “She went to her death as she lived her life, wrapped in duty and obligation. Do not worry over her; she doesn’t worry over you – you could have been any number of monsters before or since. It is the American slayer you have to worry about.”

“Namazzi,” Spike says, stepping forward with awe on his face, and his words are then halting, “I remember you.”

“My name you bothered to learn. Did that slow you down? I for one would rather have had her fate than mine. There are better and worse deaths.”

“I owe you,” he says. “You made me learn a very useful language. Namazzi. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” He sinks onto the bed opposite her, staring at her. His last three words are in a different language – Namazzi doesn’t understand them, but she doesn’t have to, the inflection is obvious. Every tongue has curses. “I wish I knew what to ask you.”

“Am I me? I’m not sure, but there are so many of us in here. Some are not so strong as I am. There were four American slayers, but two knew you. Four, in all history, and half significantly involved with William the Bloody. It is a young place, America.”

“Does Dana control you? Is she still there?””

“Do not waste this time, vampire. Dana is weak, but she is growing stronger and the dead cannot rule the living for long. I’m telling you about the threat that faces you – two slayers, one who craves you and one who hates you. Their memories are most powerful, most dangerous in here. More and more, she thinks of a son left without his mother.”

“Nikki.” He touches his chest strangely. He is holding the edge of his coat. “Can you carry a message to her? Tell her I met her son? I… fuck it’ll just piss her off more. But he’s alive and healthy, when I left him. I suppose a mum would be proud of him.”

“Oh you’re so stupid, wanting to talk like this, my vampire. I wish we had gotten a chance to fight. I would have finished you. Now I...” she fell forward a little, catching herself on the pliable surface of the mattress. Spike reached for her, to steady or to plead, she couldn’t tell. “You speak better now,” she said, and smiled, and then her face changed entirely. Blank, and then angry. Dana snatches her hand back from Spike’s.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

Spike backs away from her. “No, petal. Can’t see how you would.”


	7. Slayer Memories, Part Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buffy and Angel have a heart-to-heart in this section!

Buffy was woozy-headed, unsure even who helped her to her feet, whose arm she as leaning on when she looked again, and yup, there he was. Spike. Alive, well, and holding Dana at arms length.

Angel was saying something, above her. Huh, it was Angel’s arm.

“Hell no!” Spike turned pleading eyes on her. “You’re not leaving me here to run off with cavebrow!”

“Spike, someone has to watch the crazy slayer. We’ll be five minutes, alright?”

“You bastard. You’d use a moment like this…”

“I can’t deal with this,” Buffy said, and started back the way she’d come. “This… no.”

Angel followed her, arms reaching out to her.

“No,” she said again. “This is surreal, and if you two are just going to do the adolescent boys thing, again…”

“Buffy,” Angel grabbed her elbow and dragged her back. “My office is right here. You can sit down, we can talk, maybe explain this… uh, well, like I said, it’s a long story.”

Buffy dithered between pain and curiosity. If she didn’t follow, would she ever know?

“You can’t just leave her with me!” Spike said, holding Dana out from himself with panic in his eyes.

Dana was staring at Spike in rapt fascination. Maybe it was best to give them a moment to, uh, resolve, whatever it was Dana had that needed resolving. Numbly, Buffy nodded and let Angel lead her. Behind them, Spike continued to protest, but there was something comforting in that; he sounded so normal.

The office was huge. But dark and quiet and that was nice in and of itself. Angel busied himself getting her a glass of soda – diet Sprite, no ice. Wow, he remembered that?

When he ran out of things to fetch he stood awkwardly in front of her, fidgeting, then sticking his hands in his pockets to stop fidgeting. “So, where do I start?”

Buffy put her water glass on the broad arm of the chair. “Spike,” she said.

Angel scratched the back of his head and shrugged again. “A few weeks after, you know, _after_ , the amulet was delivered back here. Envelope had no return address, no fingerprints on it, either, save three postal workers and our in-house mail guy. Uh, that’s not really important, is it?”

Buffy shook her head.

“So I opened the envelope, and Spike sorta, well, he popped out of the amulet.” Angel made vague popping-out gestures with his hands.

“What, like a jack in the box?” Buffy shook her head again. In her saddest, most serious voice, she asked, “Why didn’t you call me?”

“He was incorporeal.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, he’s all solid now, but for the first couple months, he was a ghost, physically tied to this location. He couldn’t even move things around like your average ghost.”

“So, she repeats: why didn’t you call me?”

Angel opened his mouth, waved his hand a bit, and then shook his head, changing his mind. He walked back to his desk and leaned against it. Folding his arms, he regarded Buffy. “You never called me.”

Buffy’s eyebrows shot up. “Is this high school?”

“I’m not being petty. It’s just the fact of the matter. You never called me, so you didn’t enter into my mind.”

“So much for true love,” Buffy said, only half-mocking. “You were all over my cookie-dough before the battle.”

Angel grimaced and buried his hands in his pockets again. “Faith called me, when you were at the Best Western Salt Lake. She told me about the battle, and who made it and who didn’t. I wouldn’t have known Spike was gone before he appeared in my office if it weren’t for her. And yeah, I was a little hurt. I assumed if you needed to evacuate and re-group, you’d come to LA. I had supplies ready for you.”

“Giles didn’t – doesn’t – trust you.” It was Buffy’s turn to look embarrassed. “He made the call on what direction to head. I was dealing with grief, wounded, and a dozen girls who just developed super-powers, so don’t get on my case because I forgot about your feelings. We said our goodbyes.”

“I need a drink,” Angel said.

Buffy watched him cross to the mini-bar. “So,” she said, “why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want to complicate your life. More.” He set down a glass harder than he perhaps should have. “Do you want anything?”

“Soda’s fine.” She picked up her glass again and raised it as if toasting.

Angel poured himself a hefty shot and returned to his seat on the desk.

“I loved him,” Buffy said.

“Buffy…”

“No. I loved him.” She stood, hand to her chest. “And you let me believe he was dead.”

Angel swallowed too much whiskey all at once and coughed. He held the back of his hand to his mouth until he was sure all the liquid was down and he could answer. “You already thought he was dead. I just… let you keep thinking what you already thought.”

“Bastard!” Buffy slapped him.

Angel held the glass up to his stinging cheek. “Ow!” He said, and considered briefly that when it came to Slayers and vampires, perhaps it was best to match up the volatile bottle-blondes and let the sensible brunettes have some peace. “Not all this blame is mine, you know. Spike could have called you himself, once he could pick up a phone.”

“Oh yeah, after he’d been unable to for how long? After he’d gotten used to the idea of not seeing me? Maybe started to think I’d moved on? Or after _someone_ spent every intervening day taking pot-shots at his teeny little glass ego?”

“I did _not_.”

“Oh, I’ve seen you two in the same room together twice now, Angel. I know there was pot-shotting. Er, shots.”

“Buffy.” Angel lowered his head, looking pleadingly into her eyes. “It was his choice, and he chose, same as I did, to let you live your life. We’re not good for you, neither of us. We’ll never not be vampires.”

“I’ll never not be a slayer. Do you honestly think I care? I thought you were beyond making my decisions for me.”

Angel winced. “Buffy, I’m sorry. However, why-ever this happened. I’m sorry. We’re here now, and talking. What are you going to do?”

Buffy was surprised to find herself relaxing, letting Angel take her hands in his. “I don’t know,” she said. She shook her head. “I’m so angry. And happy, too. And… nauseous.”

He leaned back. “Uh… want to sit down?”

She smirked and shook her head. “No. It’s just… I had to find out this way. Through Dana drawing pictures of him without his hands. Oh god. I was so afraid I’d get here and he… he’d be in pieces.”

Angel’s big arms wrapped around her, drawing her face down onto a broad chest. “I was scared too,” he said.

Buffy stiffened, pulled back to see his face. “Really?”

“Spike’s special to me, for a variety of reasons, half of which don’t make sense, but, there you have it. I thought my stomach was going to fall out of my mouth when I saw him like that, with his arms cut off.”

They shared a long, thoughtful gaze. Buffy broke the solemn moment with a smirk. “So Xander was right all along.”

Angel grimaced. “I don’t want to know.”

Buffy buried her face against his chest again, this time to hide her giggles. “No, you really don’t.”

Angel let out a much-suffering sigh. “If you tell Spike I said anything remotely mushy about him, I’m going to have to stake the guy to save face. Just remember that.” He stroked her hair and back while the giggles subsided. “What are you going to do? Ask him to go back with you?”

Buffy disentangled herself and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know. Would he?”

“I think he’d follow you into a pit made out of fire and filled with holy water. That doesn’t mean he should.”

Awkwardly, Buffy returned to her seat. She picked at lint on her pants. “He never believed me.”

“He’s an insecure idiot.” Angel sighed again and looked for his empty whiskey glass. To himself, he added, “Someone made him that way.”

Buffy bit her lip, watching his expression. “Hey,” she said, with false cheer, “twenty minutes alone in the same room together and we’ve only had one slap and one brood. Well, maybe one apiece. Still, go team us!”

Angel turned to see Buffy give him a mock toast with her soda. He returned it with his empty whiskey glass. “Well, we are the heroes,” he said.

They settled side by side on the edge of the desk, looking out the windows together in heavy silence.


	8. Slayer Memories, Part Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all knew that leaving Spike with Dana was a Bad Idea. (TM)
> 
> It's really an accident of synchronicity that both my WIPs have Spike at his absolute lowest at the same time, so I apologize to those who are reading both.
> 
> Also - action from Dana's POV? eeek!

The Vampire is staring at her, his face changes like dragonfly wings in the sun. She sees awe, fear, worry.

None of these are for her. They are for the Other that spoke through her. Dana has had it with the Slayer Memories. She hates them and wishes she could hit them.

Instead she hits the vampire.

He looks startled.

She leans forward onto her arms and swings her legs up, over, to kick him. The painting falls off the wall.

He turns to her, looking feral, shoulders settling like a cat. “That’s it. Enough coddling. You’re going down, Sybil!”

He pounces.

She is ready for him. She moves without thinking, a dance she has rehearsed before, with this partner. Countless times before. It is endless and beginningless, like the dance of the sun and moon and stars. The beauty of their motions is in stark contrast to the room, which crumbles and falls into ruin around them. Mostly plaster dust and particleboard furnishings.

He slams her into the wall, which groans around her. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

“Much,” she finishes the line, and presses her lips to his.

He drops her and backs away, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth.

“Evil, soulless thing,” she says.

His mouth is cruel. “Oh, no. You’re late to that party.” He is half-crouched, arms out to catch her should she move right or left.

But she has other weapons to throw. “Dead inside. Nothing good or clean.”

His eyes flinch, but he holds his ground. “Just you try it, girlie. I’m gonna wrap you up and hold you until the white coats come.”

“Beneath her.” She sees him trying not to react. “Could never love you.”

His right hand lowers. “You’re not speaking for her. These are memories, that’s all. Fights we had.”

He’s faltering, weak. This is the time to go for the kill. She smiles and her laugh is from the back of her throat. She doesn’t know what to say, just that whatever hurts most is right, everything else is wrong. Something Other in her is crowing.

She does a jump-kick just like a cheerleader and twists to add a second foot and knock him head-first to the floor.

Her knees are next to his cheeks and he’s stopped, a moment, when he shouldn’t be stopped but fighting back. His hands are on her thighs, pushing back, trying to ask her to move. She doesn’t. She hooks his arms with her legs and holds him down.

Her hands are on his throat. There is a hard ball in his throat that moves up and down against the base of her thumb. “You don’t want to kill me,” he said.

He’s right. Partially. Dana wants to own, reclaim, take, destroy. Not kill. Maybe. Mostly. She grinds her knees down and feels his chest rising, twisting, and then utterly still beneath her thighs. “Dirty,” she says. “Filthy. Unclean.”

“Is that what she thought? You know, don’t you? You’d know. Tell me. Is she back there snogging Angel, right now?”

She giggles and says, “Yes,” because she knows it's what he doesn’t want her to say. She doesn’t quite understand what the question is, but it doesn’t matter. Questions don’t have to be understood; you can hear the answer in how they are asked. He has given up. She moves down his body, her hands loosening on his throat. Memories tell her of a delicious sensation, rubbing over a hard cylinder that fits perfectly against concave flesh. She remembers it many, many times. And all parts of her want this. They want to own. Triumph. Pleasure. And her self that has never taken pleasure in a man has no uncertainty now, this is The Vampire. He is Different. Memories are vague and mixed and there is so much fear of men and hurt and crying and bodies not our own, but this, she owns this. She wriggles around, seeking out that hardness.

Which isn’t there. She grinds her hips into his, and it isn’t right. It isn’t like the memory at all. He has tricked her, somehow. She opens his pants and feels soft skin, like a fat worm, useless. She growls and digs her fingernails into it. “Liar,” she said.

He bucks and twists, fighting again. His legs are very flexible. He gets one over her and their positions change. He has her hands. No! Hands are power.

She fights wildly, like a cat in water. The water is blood and runs pretty from him. He is all holds, no nails, no teeth. Nothing sharp, he is trying to press and hold.

He isn’t very smart, after all, to be doing that. She beats him. She laughs. The ground is soft under her feet – no, she’s standing on the bed. She bounces and kicks at him. He is wary now, hands out. When he comes into reach, she attacks. It’s easy and she’s wearing him down.

There is sound, and she realizes it’s coming from her. She spits out every insult that the Others ever threw at him. Some are poetic and some are standard, mental shorthand, some are painful and raw and half-loving and those hurt the best.

He flinches when they hit just as surely as when her foot impacts his sternum. She can almost see them flying into his flesh, sharp little knives.

This is what beats him down. This is why he falls to his knees after another kick to the arm that should not have mattered any more or less.

He crumples to the ground. “She didn’t mean it. Not really. Couldn’t ever love a thing like me.”

Dana finishes him off with a mule-kick to the face, now conveniently on a level comfortable to her feet. He falls over and she jumps off the bed, landing on him with a howl of triumph.

The vampire is hers. He was always going to be hers and now at last he is.

She ties his wrists with his belt and searches the room for something sharp.


	9. Slayer Memories, Part Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Slayer Memories! Back to Buffy POV! Picking up right after her conversation with Angel in part 6, so we're moving a little back in time.

“Enough broody?” Buffy turned to Angel.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I like to get a good four hours in.” She poked him in the ribs. “Ow. Yeah, Enough brooding.” He stood and held a hand out to help her down from the edge of the desk. “Ready for this? Do you know what you’re going to say?”

“Yes.” She straightened her shirt. “I’m going to smack him in the face and ask why he didn’t call.”

“Great. I’m a rehearsal.”

“Oh no, you’re your own special rant and shrine in the ex-boyfriend hall of fame.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “Am I supposed to be honored or insulted?”

Just as they reached the door to the office it burst open. A green demon entered, arms spread wide, “The fabulous Buffy! Oh, gorgeous! You have no idea how much I’ve heard and READ about you in auras!”

Two men and a woman hung back behind the exuberant demon, trying to be polite but clearly interested.

“Uh… hi,” Buffy said.

Angel sighed. “Buffy, this is Lorne, head of our entertainment division. Gunn, head of legal, and Fred, research. You remember Wesley.”

Buffy’s hand was taken and grasped in succession. She blinked at the former watcher. “Apparently I don’t,” she said.

Lorne waved his hands. “We can’t have the slayer, the numero uno girl in all the world, greeting people in the office like it’s a Thursday night potluck! We need to go out, mes amis! Tell me, sugarblossom, and be honest because I will know if you’re lying – how do you feel about daiquiris?”

She blinked at the large green hands – red nails. Huh. Or were those claws? – engulfing her own. “Uh. I think, really, I should see Spike, now, before I lose my nerve. Again.”

“Hey, where is blondie?” Gunn looked around. “Thought he’d be front-and-center for the slayer reunion, after how he talked about her.”

“Guest suite 2.” Harmony popped up at the edge of their circle, seemingly from nowhere. “Are there really going to be daiquiris? Bossy, can I come?”

“Well, let’s go collect Spike and get to the drinks,” Gunn suggested, stepping back to indicate the direction they should go.

Fred took his arm. “I think we should let them do this alone.”

Wesley – and when, exactly, did laughable council-boy Wesley become a stone cold hottie? – seemed to silence the whole crowd with his eyes, though he didn’t do anything more than look to Angel and ask, simply, “Angel?”

“Yeah,” Angel said, shrugging. “Gunn, Fred, Wes, Lorne – go grab us a table at the Cat and Fiddle? We’ll catch up.”

Lorne looked a little disappointed and said something about a new Cuban bar, but they all filed away, a crowd of smiles and new names and handshakes.

Buffy shook her head, a little overwhelmed and needing to re-focus. Angel was standing in front of her, gesturing down the corridor as Gunn had done.

“Are you okay with this?” Buffy asked. “I mean, the ex-boyfriend thing. You never approved of Riley, and on the acceptable boyfriend scale? A few notches above Spike.”

“It’s not a sure thing. He could tell you to get lost.”

Buffy grimaced. Angel had meant it as a joke, she knew, but the time, the lack of call – wasn’t that all one big ‘get lost’? What if she was reading this all very, very wrong. “Then we’ll be friends,” she said.

They reached the elevators. “I still don’t think you should be dating a vampire at all, but…” Angel shrugged. “You could do worse.”

Buffy nudged him as they entered the elevator. “Wow. Praise and adulation. Name worse, hedging compliment guy, and it better not be ‘the first evil’.”

“Eh. There’s this one guy in Rome – promise me you’ll never date anyone pretentious enough to call themselves _The_ Immortal. Like there’s only one.”

“I bet him and ‘The Master’ could have loads of fun. If, you know, The Master wasn’t a smudge on the base of Sunnydale crater.”

They reached the hallway for the guest suites, both feeling a little relieved. Whatever happened next, well, it was going to happen. The hard part, they both considered, was over. “This building is… well it’s huge. And all very nicely carpeted. We’re going to have to have a long talk, Angel. You know Giles thinks you’ve gone totally evil again, and the beige is compelling.”

Angel froze mid-step. He tilted his head.

“What?” Buffy asked.

“Blood,” he said, and ran.

Buffy was only half a step behind when Angel ripped the guest-suite door open (and off its top hinge.) Angel visibly baulked at what he saw and for half a second succeeded in holding Buffy back.

All the furnishings were destroyed and flung to the edges of the room like the litter on the floor of an animal cage, leaving little to hide the tableaux: Dana crouched over Spike, his clothes discarded around him like the flotsam of the room, his skin marked with cuts and scrapes, and most prominently a thin spiraling pattern she drew on his chest with the long, wickedly sharp wooden shard of a table leg.

Buffy was caught mid-step, surging forward, she now held out her hands and nearly whispered. “Dana. Dana step back from him.”

Dana looked up with a wolfish grin. “It’s mine,” she said.

“No. No. Oh god, no. Please, Dana. Put the stake down. No no no no no.” Buffy’s voice was rising in pitch and falling in volume to become a whine at the back of her throat. She stepped carefully into the room, hands at her sides. Angel grabbed her arm, once more, but she just pulled free, stepping to the right as Angel, not needing any word or signal, stepped to the left.

“Hi, Dana,” Angel said, his voice too loud in comparison. “Uh, want to stand up, shake my hand?”

She hissed through her teeth and lunged at Angel, who barely dodged the blow. “Or that,” he said.

“Vampire! Head and heart! Kill!”

Buffy felled her from behind with a roundhouse kick to the skull.

Dana scrambled on the floor, her eyes wide with shock and betrayal.

And then Buffy kept kicking. “No." She bloodied Dana's lip. "I did not." She grabbed her as she tried to crawl away. "Come all this way." She punched viciously, causing Dana's head to snap back. "To see him die again.” She kicked and kicked the now prone form. "No!"

“Buffy! Buffy!” Angel got a punch to the jaw that sent him reeling the first time he tried to pull Buffy off the insane slayer.

The second time he went in low, wrapped her in a bear hug around the middle and just pulled her back. “Stop. She’s out cold.”

And wondered which one “insane slayer” referred to.

Buffy twisted and fought, but then, realizing the situation, relaxed, letting Angel support her weight.

“Let me go. Let me kill her.”

“No, Buffy. You can’t do that. Not a slayer.”

She shuddered, and Angel realized belatedly that it was the adrenaline coming down. She nodded against his bicep.

“Can you stand? I’m going to call security.”

Buffy nodded. “I trusted her. I thought… I thought she understood. We… did she understand anything at all?”

And Angel left her swaying on her feet to run into the hallway. Alone with two unconscious forms, one crumpled in a heap at her feet, one spread out like a sacrifice.

Why did Spike always have to be the sacrifice? She knelt beside him, knees breaking shards of particleboard and laminate. She reached for his chest and laid her fingers timidly, as though afraid the touch would burn. There was no heartbeat, of course, but there was some solace, in feeling his solidity.

When the room flooded with people, she let them tell her where to stand and move as they slipped between her and Spike.


	10. Slayer Memories, Part Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point we break from the Dana chapter / Buffy chapter pattern. And I should warn you that there will only be one or two more chapters of this fic.

Spike’s injuries were not extensive – by vampire standards. But they wanted him to stay under observation. He fidgeted restlessly with the little ties on his hospital gown. “Don’t know what they’re observin’,” he muttered, and poked at the lifeless heart monitor standing silent by his head. He stretched each limb, feeling the odd twinge and thrum of pain here and there. Time was he slept off worse on a cold stone slab.

That, and the hospital room was depressing as hell. This was the same place they’d stuck him when his arms were cut off. And he’d had more than enough time contemplating the faded Maxfield Parish print hanging behind the wires and hooks for intensive care equipment, or the dull view of a green and grey corridor outside the small window on the door.

He didn’t want time to think about how easily he’d caved, as usual, to the barbs of the heart. Some slayer of slayers; more like power’s appointed slayers’ whipping-boy.

What point was there even getting out of the sodding bed? The barmy slayer had left him with nothing more than bruises and cuts, it was true, and a film of sweat and female fluid that made him feel no more violated than the residue of memory her words had built up.

As long as Buffy had been unreachable, unseen, she’d been a sort of Schrödinger’s Girlfriend: his and not at the same time until the damn box opened and probability collapsed into ‘not’.

It wasn’t, he reminded himself, like he’d ever thought he could win against Angel. Always better, stronger, brighter. Angel had more in common with Buffy, anyway. He had that sort of suburban American square-ness that fit in well with Buffy’s figure skating dreams and white picket fences.

The door opened and he almost turned away, not wanting to even flirt up the nurses and orderlies. But something – he couldn’t tell if it was scent or some other sense that made him lift his head.

“Hey,” Buffy said, standing just inside the door, hands clasped tight in front of her. “I was going to slap your face, but, well, with you in a hospital bed and all, I think I’d lose all my hero cred.”

“Fuck,” said Spike. He struggled to sit up and keep the blanket over his lap, the IV on his side, the… the stupid paper-thin gown in pastel green! He gripped his neckline and then gave up, letting go. “I’m not dressed.”

Buffy had to stifle a giggle at his embarrassed expression. “It’s better than Xander’s clothes.”

“Isn’t,” Spike said, bristling. “Sodding dignity’s hanging out the backside.”

“Uh,” she approached the bed. “I don’t think that’s your dignity.”

Spike scooted forward, swung his legs off the side. Buffy stepped closer. But less than a foot apart they stopped, the air between them thick and charged. They both looked away.

“So,” Spike said. He worked his mouth a little and affected a bad approximation of nonchalance. “Have a good snog with the ex?”

Buffy smacked him. Then bit her lip. “Damn. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.”

He gingerly touched the warming handprint on his cheek. “Nah. Doesn’t feel right, you not hitting me.”

To his surprise, her eyebrows crinkled. “Is that what you really think of me. Is – god, that’s our relationship, isn’t it? I… I don’t hit the other guys. I just…”

He caught her hand as she brought it up to cover her mouth. Their eyes met. He smiled lightly. “Did you come to save me, Slayer?”

Her mouth opened and closed. “Kinda,” she confessed. “I… Spike. I…”

He looked surprised as she brushed his arm out of the way and grabbed him in a hard hug. She pressed her face to his chest. “Spike. You were gone. And I waited too long. I was such a coward and so stupid and I…”

Gingerly he set his hand on her back as it shook through sobs, afraid she might dissolve into illusion at any moment. She didn’t.

His stupid old heart broke into a hundred pieces and cobbled itself together into a warm, glowing mosaic. He kissed her forehead. “No, no, love, you were brave and strong and putting others first. Like always, love. Proud of you.”

“Stop. Don’t.” She wriggled her way out of his arms and backed up. “Don’t forgive me.”

He stood and approached her, challenge in his gait. “Why not?”

“You’re always doing this. You always forgive me. I want you to be mad at me.”

“That’s daft,” he said. “I’ll be mad when I want to be, yeah?” He touched her shoulders.

She fell against him. In a very tiny voice, she asked, “Why didn’t you call?”

“Dunno,” he lied. “Just stupid, I think.”

She pulled back, held him at arms length and stared hard into his eyes with an almost school-masterish expression of firm concentration. “I. Love. You. Did you hear that? Do you understand? No apocalypse, no imminent death. I’m telling you I love you.”

He shifted uneasily. “The words, individually, all make sense, it’s just that order you put them in has me confused.”

“Damnit!” She threw her arms around his shoulders and pressed their lips together.

There was a pause, during which she was sure she’d just embarrassed herself and done the stupidest thing in a long line of stupid things, but then his hands slowly came to rest on her sides and his lips opened against hers and it was like years and worries and deaths melted away, and they were just each other.

Just kissing.

***

“You were told NOT to interfere? By who?” Angel pinned the security officer to his chair with a glare.

And he was squirming quite appropriately. “By Mr. Spike! He repeatedly said he didn’t want any fight of his interrupted, for any reason.”

“And you listened to him?” Angel gripped the chair arms, causing the security chief to cringe. “He isn’t even on the payroll!”

“Spike… is very intimidating, sir.”

Angel growled. And smiled at the reaction. “And I’m not?”

“No! I mean yes!”

Angel pushed away. “Let me put this in short words you can understand. Let Spike be if he’s winning, but if you see him starting to lose, get in there. I sweep up his dust, I’ll be sweeping yours next. Got it?”

“Not a vamp… “ Angel raised his eyebrow. “Yes, sir, yes, I got it.”

Angel left the security office muttering about “The good old days when you could just behead minions.”

***

They kissed, and kissed – nothing else, just moaning and pouring all their emotion into their lips and tongues like inexperienced teenagers unsure what else they could do. It was good. But Spike broke away first, looking a little embarrassed. “Uh… bollocks are still swinging free here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Um…” Buffy jerked a thumb toward the exit. Spike nodded.

She waited in a plastic chair feeling elated and afraid all at once. Could this really work? Could they just… be? She touched her lips, feeling the memory of pressure. She wouldn’t talk. Don’t talk, she admonished herself. Things went so much smoother with Spike when they didn’t say anything to each other. They both were too good at wounding with words.

Still, she was about ready to slap him again and shout a tirade for making her wait by the time he appeared.

Black jeans. Black t-shirt tight over his well-defined arms. Her anger melted. When had she developed a fetish for black cotton?

Silly question.

She couldn’t get her arms around him fast enough.

Spike craned his head back. “Buffy…”

“No. No talk. Kissing. Kissing good.”

Spike’s chest reverberated with laughter, his shoulders bouncing under her arms and confounding her grip.

“Hey!” She frowned.

“Sorry, luv. Haven’t been drinking, have you?”

She pouted at him and let her hands slide down over his chest, enjoying the feel of the fabric, even as it clung to him here and there over his wounds. “Cave-Buffy misses you too.”

“I bet she does,” he said in a low, seductive purr, his hands coming to rest low on her hips. “But seeing as how I just got the stuffing beat out of me, I have a few questions, and I want them answered before any more snoggin’ takes place.”

“Evil vampire.”

“That’s how you like me, isn’t it?”

She shook her head, smiling in wonder at him. “You’re really here. And you’re really you.”

“When you went to talk to Angel…”

“You mean when Angel dragged me away from my nervous breakdown? And we talked about how I should ask you to take me back? That talk with Angel?” She raised her eyebrows challengingly.

“The poof didn’t…”

“He did.” She frowned. “But I think he did say something about staking you if I told.”

“Right. All’s normal, then.” Spike shook his head. “Just one more question, then. Where’s Dana?”

Buffy blinked in shock.

“The barmy slayer,” Spike elaborated. “What happened to her? Was a bit out of it for the climax, I think.”

“I don’t know. I sort of followed you and I’ve been up here the whole time. She, uh, might be in another hospital room up here.” Buffy looked around the bland corridor as if seeing it for the first time. In a very quiet voice, she said, “I kinda tried to kill her.”

Spike kissed her hair. “That’s sweet,” he said. “Wrong, but sweet. Come on, let’s own up to our pasts.” He took her hand and led her down the corridor.


	11. Slayer Memories, Part Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the last part of Slayer Memories. We break into what I hope is a balanced third person, though it starts off heavily Dana.

Hospital. Oh no no no. Dana was in a hospital. Where they tie you down and they make your head slow and fuzzy and all the days blend in to each other and it’s dead, deader than vampires who at least have a semblance of life.

She tasted cotton thick in her mouth and there was cotton thick around her wrists as she pulled and tried to get free.

Her heart beat frantically in her chest, a little trapped rabbit, and she tried to slip away, into the not-thinking, not-being that helped her so many times before, but it wouldn’t come, for some reason. She couldn’t make herself be someone else.

She was just Dana, and she was alone, and scared.

She thought over what had happened, what had gone wrong. Spike. She had finally had Spike as her own. It was supposed to be wonderful, like the memories, but he had just lain there, still and dead. And while she hadn’t minded while excitement boiled in her and her insides tingled like the most delicious itch, there had been disappointment and emptiness when her pleasure peaked and then faded.

She didn’t want bodies to just be things you took and used. She wanted the swimming pool blue eyes full adoring. Why couldn’t she make him look at her like that again?

And she wanted Buffy back. The good Buffy who taught her cheers and got her out of art therapy. The first person ever to look at her like she was really there, to talk to her like she was a person, not a baby or a problem or a thing.

Buffy who had kicked her, put her down and hurt her.

A tear slipped down Dana’s cheek, re-wetting old, dried tracks. Buffy didn’t want her anymore. She didn’t understand why. What had she done? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Just danced. Just played the part in her memories, all the parts that jumbled together making the past so much more interesting than the present.

The present was bleak and square and drips and beeps and bandages and restraints. There was no fight, no hunt, no kill, no joy.

She despaired.

The door opened, sending brighter light in a widening triangle over the ceiling. She turned toward it and barred her teeth, growling since she could do nothing else.

“Oh this is so not a good idea.” Buffy balked, but Spike held his hand firmly on the small of her back, stopping her retreat.

“Hullo, princess,” Spike said, pushing Buffy gently before him toward the bed.

His voice was warm and soothing. Dana felt a stirring of hope and renewed desire. Her vampire must have just been confused, before. Here he was, coming for her, to free her and be hers.

“Got a bit knock-about there, didn’t it? So we’re gonna just dispense with the round of apologies and accept, yeah? Everyone here is sorry for the part they played, right?”

Buffy bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Dana. I lost control. I thought you were going to dust Spike.” She glanced at Spike sidelong and lifted her chin. “And I’d do the same in an instant.”

Dana tried to smile, but it came out looking manic. She wanted very much to forget about that other Buffy – the hitting one.

“Buffy’s sorry, you hear?” Spike put his hand on the bed railing near to where Dana’s wrist was tied.

Dana nodded. “Cheer,” she said.

Buffy covered her smile with her hand. “Yes,” she said. “We can cheer again.”

Spike cleared his throat. “As for me – I can’t even say sorry. It’s beyond that, between us.” He glanced at Buffy and then back to Dana. Crystal blue eyes, intent, not adoring but something close enough. She didn’t want him ever to look away. “Between me and both of you, all the slayer line. Don’t know if I can explain it to you, about what it meant to me, why I did what I did.”

“You’re not that person anymore,” Buffy said, her hand on his forearm.

Spike turned his head to her. “Still me, love. Same as you are the same little girl who wanted to grow up to be Dorothy Hammil.” He smiled sadly.

“Let me up,” Dana pleaded. She wanted to ask him to keep looking at her, not Buffy, but there was something unreachable in his gaze when it was on the other slayer, something she hadn’t seen from the outside in her memories, how he saw only her. “No,” Dana said. “Please. Untie. Unchain. Not the hospital.”

Buffy was the first to look at her. “She’s really freaking out.” She reached for the restraints that were jerking and straining as Dana moved her fist. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Buffy said.

“She wants let go,” Spike said. “Maybe we ought to.”

Buffy’s soft hair brushed over Dana’s arm, just as it had that first time she’d hugged her. “Are you out of your undead mind? After what she did to you?”

“Buffy, I know a thing or two about dealing with insane people. This isn’t helping her.”

Buffy’s eyes were hard, bottle-green glass. She leaned close so Dana could see her nostrils flare as she breathed. “Say you’re sorry,” she said. “Apologize to Spike and swear you’ll never hurt him again, or so help me…”

“Buffy. Love.” Spike’s hands were on Buffy’s shoulders, pulling her back, away from Dana. “Threats aren’t helping either. Calm down and let me talk to her.”

They switched places. Spike’s cool fingertips stroked the flesh that was raw from pressing against the wrist-cuff. “Want out of these, don’t you?” Dana nodded vigorously, so hard her head swam a little and black snowflakes flitted at the edge of her vision. “Gonna get you out, that’s a promise.”

Dana stopped thrashing against her bonds. Her head fell back against the pillow, hair all disarrayed around her as she relaxed, taking in slow breaths. “Look at that. She believes me,” Spike said with quiet wonder, still stroking her wrist, and now trailing his fingers up and down her forearm. “That’s a girl. These bonds, they’re about fear, kitten. Fear of you, and control. If you don’t want others to control you this way, you have to learn to control yourself. Believe me, it’s hard, but if a soulless vampire can learn, you can. You’re all shiny and special. Chosen.”

“Spike…” Buffy sounded irritated.

“Sh. It’s getting through to her. I can see. Nod for me, kitten.” Dana nodded. “You understand that you have a special destiny, and you’re going to have to work for it?” Again Dana nodded. She didn’t quite understand, but at the same time she knew she was making a promise. Yes, she promised. She would do whatever the vampire wanted so that he would keep looking at her like that, so intently. “And we have to talk about what happened. Don’t know who or what I am to you, kitten. But you can’t do that to people, what you did to me. You understand? Isn’t right, specially not when a bloke’s knocked out. That’s for people care about one another, yeah?”

Dana didn’t know how to answer. What had she done? Spike was talking all around something without mentioning it. Buffy’s expression was darkening. Whatever it was, she knew it, and it was Dana’s fault.

“I’ll kill her,” Buffy said, under her breath.

“No,” Spike said. “Been enough killing and trying to kill each other, hasn’t there?”

Dana raised her chin. “You killed me twice.” She didn’t know what she was asking for, or why her voice cracked and sounded so pathetic. A tear formed at the corner of her eye.

“Girl’s not had a fair go of it,” Spike said. “Out of her mind to start, and all the slayers, all their assorted emotional baggage weighing on her. Buffy, Dana didn’t do anything I didn’t deserve.”

“Don’t say that.”

Dana whimpered in the back of her throat as it looked like the two people in the room would come to blows and there was nothing she could do to intervene. “No,” she said. “Don’t fight.”

“No one deserves that,” Buffy said, her jaw was stiff, her teeth tight together.

“No fighting,” Dana whispered.

“It’s mine to forgive, and I do. I’ve forgiven worse.” Spike had a wavering look in his eye, like he might change his mind and not be so nice at any moment. He kept moving his eyes from Buffy to her. “Promise you won’t do it again. Say you’ll try an’ understand why it was wrong. You have to do that, kitten.”

“Won’t do it again. Try to understand.” Dana was crying now. “I want to be someone else now. Please.”

Buffy’s warm hand curled around hers, alerting Dana to how cold she was, spread out under the thin hospital sheet. “I died twice,” Buffy said.

She clutched the warmth and sniffed back her tears. There was water glinting in Buffy’s eyes too. Dana nodded. They’d all died, everyone in that room. But they weren’t alone.

Never alone again.

She slipped into sleep, exhausted.

Spike stood at Buffy’s side, stroking her shoulder while she tried to hide her tears. It was a lot for the slayer, he knew, to express herself, to give pieces of herself away. “We’ll take care of her,” Spike said. “Yeah?”

“H-how? I couldn’t even… couldn’t even bring her to LA without her getting loose and you…”

“Sh.” He kissed the top of her head. “Gotta try and make things right, don’t we? And you and me, we’re always better when we have work to do. Angel will help.”

Buffy laughed then. Of all the trauma she’d experienced, nothing was so surreal as Spike nonchalantly, no, confidently, referring to Angel as a source of aid! She laid her head on Spike’s shoulder, nuzzled into the comfortable dip at the top of his pectoral muscle.

“We can do it,” she said. “Because we’re together.”

“That’s my girl,” he said with indulgent pride, and kissed her again.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Total word count for the whole piece came out 15,500 - not counting "Debriefing Dana". I hope you've enjoyed!


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